Friday, October 2, 2009

Increase Online Business With High Quality Sales Letters

There's no doubt about it - a compelling sales letter is the key to a successful internet business

. After all - that's what initially gets your attention!

Without a sales letter that gets your readers attention and convinces them to buy your product, you're internet business

may suffer. That's how essential it is to have an persuasive sales letter.

If you've ever read every word from an email marketing campaign, then that sales letter obviously did a good job in getting - and keeping - your attention.

Knowing how to write these sales letters is important, obviously! So, how do you do it?

Headlines! Get Their Attention!

Headlines are the first thing that potential customers notice. Not only will you get their attention, but you'll draw them in to read further on in the sales letter.

What Will this Product Do For Your Customer?

"What's in it for me?" You need to make the product sound so interesting and worthy that your customer will feel compelled to have it. Focus on your customer!

Take Action!

At the end of your sales letter, you need to include instructions on actions to be taken. You need to re-state why your client needs your product, and grab their attention again the way you did with the headline.

Now, I realize that all this may sound a little daunting to those who don't necessarily have great writing skills. Writing sales letters may be problematic...

Difficulties With Writing Sales Letters...

- It takes a LOT of time and effort to put sales letters together, which can be torture if you hate writing!

- Writing sales letters is difficult, and requires skill;

- Poorly written sales letters will lose the attention of potential customers fast.

Your sales letter is your pitch, and if it doesn't do a good job, your online business will suffer. How well your sales letter 'sells' is crucial - regardless of whether you want people to subscribe to your site, or buy a product.

Starting from scratch can be overwhelming! Time is money - nobody wants to sit hour after hour writing sales letters that only generate low conversions.

What Should The Internet Marketer Do To Get Online Attention, Save Time, And Get High Quality Sales Letters?

There are software applications out there that create great looking sales letters in minutes. An easy-to-use template is used, and all you have to do is fill-in-the-blanks. This may be the best option for lazy marketers who don't want to pay a copywriter or have no writing talent or time to write. The time saved in writing these sales letters, and the money saved by not paying a copywriter, will make itself back in spades by using these software applications.

"Congratulations! You Made A Sale!" These are words every internet marketer wants to see - and as often as possible!

What to Ask in Your Online Surveys

Online surveys are a very important tool in the online world to gauge the opinions of respondents on how they feel about your products and services, your level of service, or any other factor that they have direct experience with you on. Surveys are powerful tools outside of the realm of business as well, since they are able to make significant changes to corporate policies with respect to society and environmental issues. They also make a significant impact on governmental policies when used as a force to petition. Within the realm of trading operations between a vendor and a customer, surveys are used to understand what kind of changes are required to be made to your products and services that will, for you, increase sales and revenue and, for the customers, increase the value proposition and service levels. Bearing this is mind, it is therefore necessary to ask questions based on a paradigm of getting your current service offering completely right according to customers, improving the existing offering, and then catering to user aspirations.

The whole process should start with understanding your customer demographics. This can be the first few set of questions in any survey. After that, ideally, online surveys should list questions about the existing product line and what the people think about it. Using this method, you will find out all the faults within your existing products and rectify them well before you get a stock of defects and sales returns.

After you implement all the changes, your next round of surveying should ask for information on what can be done to improve the current product line. Here the questioning should be more from a value proposition perspective. This means that you put forward your suggestions and gauge what customers think about your new value proposition. There should be some kind of a clear indication from the survey results about what people want to purchase in the improved product.

The next step of surveying involves asking people what new products and services they would like to see. Obviously, you would narrow down the options to a few feasible ones for the respondents to choose from. This will then form your new, additional product range.

While the above three steps are more specific to a particular situation of a bulk email marketer or manufacturer with an online presence, the basic concept can be applied to any situation where online surveys have to be conducted.

The last and most important part of a surveying exercise lies in the results and their correct interpretation. Results as data are absolute but their interpretation can be quite subjective and perception-based. This means that they are subject to the bias of a reviewer. Avoid falling into this trap by looking at the results of a survey dispassionately even if the survey results could be foreboding the end of an entire product line. Most of the time surveys are used as preemptive tools to avoid this very situation arising.

HTML Newsletters: How Video Email Works

HTML e-mail newsletter templates are a great way to communicate information. When you choose to use video however, be careful to do so in a manner that assures that the e-mail is delivered, and that both are viewed in a way that is conducive to the recipient. We will discuss a few tips that will help you avoid any of these problems with these areas in particular, and to make sure that your video reaches and works in whatever format you have chosen.

Tip 1: Keep the video clips short.
Avoid using clips that are too big. The last thing you want is for your e-mail to take a long time to load, and that your client chooses to delete it immediately before taking the time to read the content. Keep the size of your video clip reasonable.

Tip 2: Provide text as a back up
Many people opt to turn off the viewing of images and video in their e-mail inbox.
To avoid running into this problem, always use a text link that directs the viewer to the video. Include a short description of the video, which itself can be hyperlinked, or can be followed by a link to the video. While this lacks the power of the image, it is also perhaps the safest way to convey your message. On a similar note, never rely on the video clip to carry the crux of the message, in the case that it does not get viewed.

Tip 3: Use a still image with a link by taking a screen shot
Use a still image from the video and link it to the video. This is one way to still use the “look” from your video to attract the attention of the recipient, but without the complications of including the entire video. To do this, take a screen shot of the image you have chosen from the video. Edit this screen shot to suit your e-mail and place it in at the appropriate place. Upload the edited screen shot to the location where you are hosting all your relevant data and note the address of its location. Finally, add this link to the image in the e-mail, so that the viewer will be directed to do it if they click on the image.

Tip 4: Create an animated GIF file of the video. A GIF file is another type of image file, like a JPEG. The benefit is that it allows animated images. Because it is treated like an image, and not like a Flash or JavaScript file, it allows you the chance to include an actual video without getting stuck in the strings of the e-mail service. The catch with this method is that there is no sound – it is just the images of the video, but they are not still and therefore capture the spirit of the video. Again, you run the chance that the user has turned off the image option in their e-mail account, but if not, this is one step up from the option of including an image. Be sure to use a rather small clip so that it does not take too long to load and deter the user from viewing the segment.

HTML Email Templates: 4 Good Practices

HTML email templates are a logical next step that has to occur as part of the growth practices of an internet organization. It is a logical step because as you grow, so grows the needs of your customers to hear more from you. Templates are quite simple to acquire and this can be done by either spending a fixed time on creation of email templates yourself or with a team, by indulging in a free template service provider’s suite of products, or simply using a paid service. There are guidelines and rules that you must follow when you take either route or some general guidelines when you use a template in general. These guidelines are detailed out below:

Thinking ahead: This is a point to remember when you are creating sections within your template. These sections or templates with different sections are important because this is where you will place your links and your advertisements that will be clickables to your landing pages. Sectioning should, therefore, be logical and in a certain arrangement. The most prominent and viewable ads should be placed on the left, the lesser priority ones to the right, and the body text content should always be in between. This is because people naturally gravitate towards reading left to right.

Coding: Many HTML email templates may look like they have pretty simple HTML codes but as the complexity and aesthetics of each email increases, so do the coding complexities. This is especially true when you use sections and tables. Some people would propagate the use of WYSIWYG applications like the Office suite of applications to ensure that the coding makes sense to the creator. While this is true, there is much to be said about the accidental-incidental addition of active X controls by software. Active X and JavaScript are naturally blocked by most email clients because they can be used for viral attacks.

Spam filters: Most HTML template service providers and creators don’t think too much about the effect of loudness to trigger a spam alarm. They are more concerned about selling a good looking product. Do not make the mistake of buying the loudest template because you believe that it is an email that you cannot miss. Most spam filters will parse the HTML code in an email and capture the color combinations that are too loud and sequester them to the spam folder.

Costs: Try and make a sensible decision about costs when using an HTML email template. Do not go in for the free option just because it is available and do not go in for a paid service when your needs are very basic. Ensure that you understand the objective of your email and if you are sending it as a part of a billable exercise. Non-billable activities like sending internal mailers to employees can be done using a free template and doesn’t require complex and costly templates to be used. Therefore, keep the big picture in mind always.

A Users Guide to Success in a Residual Income Affiliate Program‏

There are a number of income models currently in place. In these tough economic times, wages have dropped and the number of secure jobs has been reduced to an alarmingly low level. In these tough times, you need to know the secrets to making good money with a residual income affiliate program.

The commercial side of the online internet boom has provided new chances of an old income model to be implemented in the new world dimensions. Residual income can make your life very easy once you learn how to create it. There are a number of residual income opportunities available. Where do you find them and how much can you make?

Residual income opportunities are available all over the internet. You need to be able to find the right one. In order to get access to the best opportunities available online, we need to get our priorities straight from the word go. There are some important aspects we need to look into before we start making large amounts of money from our residual income.

We need to decide the amount of hours we will be putting in. We also need to assess ourselves and decide what we would be good at. The best place to start is to find a good solid online program that will teach you the skills you will need and walk you through each step in the proper sequence.

We need to look for the right kind of residual income affiliate program. Many people are unaware of the financial aspects of online commercial business. A good program will give you all of the information you will need to make the right choice for you.

The most attractive opportunity is with a residual income affiliate program. These are opportunities that continue to provide you with a passive income in the future. These are out there and people are making a lot of money with them. However, there are many tips and tricks that you need to know in order to succeed.

It is imperative to join a good online program that will teach you these things. If you try and figure it all out on your own, your chance of success diminishes greatly. Find someone who has done it and follow their lead. Do what they already know works.

It is possible to make a good income online. The key is to know what you are doing. There are two ways to learn. One, you can learn the hard way by trial and error. Eventually you might figure it all out but it will cost both time and money. Two, find a good online program that will teach you everything you need to know. Follow it step by step and you will be able to avoid those costly mistakes that you would make if you were on your own. If you get started the right way, with the power of knowledge, you will be able to follow a course to success sooner than you might think.

Internet Marketing Articles

In its general sense, internet marketing covers a wide area in the internet business. Allow our writers to guide you through the important things you should know about this in their internet marketing articles.

Let your small business grow into a profit-building machine. You can do this if you take by heart the successful internet marketing tips. Make surveys and get paid. There are at least five quick ways to do this. You can also get more traffic to your webpage by using the right internet marketing strategies.

Owning & Operating a Successful Forum

It’s been more than thirty years since the invention of the ARPANet, the Defense Department’s first iteration of the Internet as we know it today. ARPANet was designed to facilitate sharing and gathering of information and to increase data redundancy in the event of a catastrophe. In its earliest form, the Internet was nothing more than a bulleting board system, or forum, where people could get together and post and comment on new and relevant information. Now, thirty years later, forums are still a central part of the Internet as we know it. So, it stands to reason that there is a very large market in creating and maintaining an Internet forum that deals with a subject that many people are interested in. What action should a 21st century entrepreneur take to capitalize on all of this potential? The most laborious, but also the most gratifying way, is to create an original, high-demand forum or online community.

The first big decision that must be made is what purpose the online community or forum will serve. Will it be a stand-alone forum, using the “hive consciousness” to disseminate information in place of a dedicated web site, or will it be a forum that is affiliated or a part of another web site?

If the message board is intended to stand alone, in place of a traditional web site, there are some unique challenges to overcome. The first and primary requirement is an audience. If there is nobody to listen and contribute content to the forum, then it is an exercise in futility. The forum should be based on a topic that a lot of people are interested in, to ensure a constant supply of new readers and contributors. Another concern with young message boards or forums is a lack of content. It stands to reason that a day old forum should have less content than a well established one. However, there are ways of legitimately filling a new, blossoming forum with lots of fresh, original, and meaningful content. If another forum owner or moderator is willing, sometimes a post exchange can be arranged, where two forums combine and share their content with each other, to supply each with quality content. Another common method is more similar to traditional 9-5 employment. Forum owners can, and often do, “employ” or otherwise compensate talented writers to join their forums, and regularly post quality content to the site. This route works well, since there are experienced writers, stimulating dialogue and member involvement.

It is much easier to make a forum succeed and thrive if it is affiliated or launched in conjunction with another web site. Especially if the web site already has a dedicated, loyal following, getting the audience to voice their opinion and interact with each other is much easier if they have a mutual interest or experience to bond over. The only main drawbacks to this type of forum format are those that are universal to almost any enterprise- there is overhead, in the form of server and hosting fees, and also as payroll, if someone is being paid to contribute content. However, the time and effort put into promoting and furthering the forum, the more rewarding the experience will be for everyone including owners, moderators, administrators, and posters alike.